Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions What you need for Excel Services As explained in the first course in the series, “Excel Services I: The basics,” Excel Services is a great way to make your data accessible to people using a Web browser. But what do you need for Excel Services to work smoothly? Using it is a collaborative effort between the people who set things up, and the people who publish files to it. Knowing a bit about what goes on behind the scenes will prepare you to get the most out of it.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions Software requirements Here are the requirements for using Excel Services. A SharePoint site based on SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise. Excel Services set up on that site.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions Software requirements Here are the requirements for using Excel Services. For people to publish Excel data to your site, they need Microsoft Office ® Excel ® 2007 installed on their computers through one of the following: Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, Office Enterprise 2007, or Office Ultimate 2007.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions Document libraries and Excel Services As discussed in “Excel Services I,” to get started, you first publish your Excel file to a document library on your SharePoint site. It’s recommended that you create a separate library for your Excel Services files, away from other Excel files. Why? Mainly because Excel Services files are probably ones you don’t want most people editing.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions Document libraries and Excel Services The picture here shows an example of a Sales Report library. Someone created it especially because they want most people to look at files in Excel Services, and not in the Excel program.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions Set up document libraries for Excel Services Excel Services requires that document libraries be set up as trustworthy places to publish files to. Without this step, files saved to a library will not open in Excel Services. Instead, people will see the message shown here: “You do not have permissions to open this file on Excel Services. Make sure that the file is in an Excel Services trusted location and that you have access to the file.”

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions Set up document libraries for Excel Services Excel Services requires that document libraries be set up as trustworthy places to publish files to. So make sure that any document library you want people to use with Excel Services is set up as a Trusted File Location.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions About permissions SharePoint permissions are important when it comes to using Excel Services. Why? Because most likely, you want people to look at data in Excel Services, and you don’t want them editing the actual worksheets in the Excel program. The best way to prevent people from editing is to make sure permissions are set up properly for the site.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions About permissions Unless your organization has permissions set up differently, your SharePoint site has four groups: Owners, Members, Visitors, and Viewers. People in the Owners group can do a lot. They can set up site-wide settings, library settings, and so on. They can also add and edit files in a library. People in the Members group have less power. They can’t determine settings, but they can add and edit files in a library.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions About permissions Unless your organization has permissions set up differently, your SharePoint site has four groups: Owners, Members, Visitors, and Viewers. People in the Visitors group can do even less. They can only open a file from a library and see a read-only copy. But they cannot edit that file and save changes. People in the Viewers group can do the same as Visitors. But there’s also something about the Viewers group that makes them special.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions The impact of permissions So what does this permissions stuff mean when you get down to it? For one, the SharePoint menu for the file will look different depending on which group someone is in. Notice how the View in Web Browser command is available for all groups. But also notice how the Visitors and Viewers do not have the Edit in Microsoft Office Excel command as an option.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions The impact of permissions So what does this permissions stuff mean when you get down to it? This is how the SharePoint site prevents people from editing the file. If you don’t have permission to edit, then the command won’t be available to you.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions The impact of permissions (cont’d) You just saw how the menu for the file is different for people in different groups. What happens when people simply click the file name without accessing the menu? Depending on the SharePoint groups people belong to, they’ll get different results. Some people can edit the file, some can open the file in Excel as read-only, and for others, the file opens in Excel Services.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions The impact of permissions (cont’d) Here’s what happens when members of each group click the file name, as shown here. Owners and Members get the option to edit the file in Excel. For Visitors, the file opens as read-only in Excel; they cannot edit the file. For Viewers, the file opens in Excel Services, where they can see it in their Web browsers.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions How to add viewers As you just learned, when Viewers click the name of a file, they automatically see the data in Excel Services, and they don’t get an option to open the file in the Excel program. Because the main point of Excel Services is to let people use your data in the Web browser, you’ll likely want most people to be in the Viewers group.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions How to add viewers The picture illustrates how to add someone to the Viewers group. On your SharePoint site, click People and Groups. Click Viewers. Click the New button to add people as Viewers.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions How to add viewers The picture illustrates how to add someone to the Viewers group. Important: When someone is added as a Viewer to a site, they have that limited viewing access throughout the whole site.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions Changing permissions for a library Other people may already have existing permissions on the site that let them edit files. What if you don’t want all of those people to edit a particular file? If you have a separate library set up, you can change permissions for the one library, and not the entire site. Then, people who can edit files in other libraries will still be able to do that, but they won’t be able to edit files in this library.

Excel Services II: Requirements, recommendations, and permissions How to change click behavior What if you’d like to make sure that anyone who clicks a file name in an Excel Services library will see the file open in Excel Services, no matter which group they belong to? You can set up the library to do this. In the document library, click Settings, click Document Library Settings, then Advanced Settings and Display as a Web page.